@JakeLumbis
That should absolutely be possible! I’d recommend reviewing this post for some additional information, but basically, this is how we’d go about it.
First, we’d want to create two new text layers named “LRW rStart” and “LRW rEnd” (with no quotes). Once we’ve got these layers in our project and we’re sure that they’re bringing in the values we want, we should be able to move on to the next step.
From there, we’ll want to add an Animator to the text layer we want to change; I’d recommend “Stroke Color”. However, we’ll also need to click the “Add” button and add the “Stroke Width” and “Stroke Color>Opacity” properties. We’ll also want to adjust the “Stroke Width” and “Stroke Color” layers to create the Faux Bold effect. After that, we’ll want to expand the “Range Selector 1” property and drill down to the “Advanced” section.
In that area, we’ll want to set “Units” to “Index” and “Based On” to “Words”. Finally, we’ll want to go back to the “Start” and “End” values of the “Range Selector 1”. Alt/Option-click on the Stopwatch to the left of the word “Start”. This should open the Expression editor. For the “Start” Expression, we’ll want to reference the “LRW rStart” layer’s value. So, for that, we would use:
text.animator("Animator 1").selector("Range Selector 1").start,parseInt(thisComp.layer("LRW rStart").text.sourceText)-1
for the “End” value, we’ll want a similar expression that references our “End” number:
text.animator("Animator 1").selector("Range Selector 1").end,parseInt(thisComp.layer("LRW rEnd").text.sourceText)
That should, in theory, work for what you’re trying to achieve. However, depending on the format of the text, it might take some tweaking. For example, in the screenshot provided, it looks like the text is formatted in a single block, which might require us to make our calculations by the number of characters rather than the number of words.
Either way that should be enough to get you started. If you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch.
Thanks,
Jeff